


wolves will keep you warm

by ilgaksu



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Canonical Character Death, M/M, The Death Cure Spoilers, hell is empty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 06:16:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5616670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilgaksu/pseuds/ilgaksu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's easier to be angry with the boy with the gun. It's harder to love him. It's harder to stand still.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wolves will keep you warm

“Why didn’t you run?” Minho says, and his shoulders dip under some invisible weight, eyes on the ground. It’s a bad look on him, is all Thomas can think; the dip like the curve in the skin of a rotten apple. Spoiled. 

And Thomas thinks:  _ because you didn’t.  _ Thomas thinks:  _ I’m too synched up to your breathing to stop now.  _ Thomas thinks:  _ one and one and one makes three. I am only singular without the two of you.  _ Thomas thinks:  _ I didn’t think.  _ He opens his mouth with the weight of promises; they hang on his jawbone and ache. Minho’s eyes are still on the ground. It’s a bad look on him. 

“You still haven’t blown me yet,” Thomas says instead, and it takes a beat, takes two, but then Minho’s eyes snap up, the shocked bleat of them to meet his just as Newt snorts, and then they’re all abruptly sniggering. Thomas can feel them shake with it, trying to be silent, looking at each other wild-eyed.  

“Keep your eyes down,” one of the guards snaps, pushing on Thomas’ neck with the weight of his rifle butt, and they all do, jolted back into their bodies and the fear in their bones. 

Slowly, Thomas reaches out and hooks two fingers against Minho’s pulse point, around his wrist. Minho’s shoulders look better now.  

“You two come here often?” Newt murmurs, all breath, and that sets them back off again. 

*

Thomas remembers this later. It’s one of the good memories. Newt had a cut on his lip and Minho’s face was smudged and beautiful, and the grief hadn’t stung them coppery yet, not enough that they couldn't get back up from it. Newt’s laugh was sweet. Minho’s eyes were soft. Thomas had so much to lose.  

*

Absence is a wound. Someone stuck a pike in Minho’s side and the water and wine spilt over the blade; when Newt died, the veil in the temple was rent in two. If stories would have stopped them dragging them out at dawn for the kill, Thomas would have talked until he went numb; talked his lips to bruises; he’d always been all talk.  _ Tommy, you’re all talk, ain’t you?  _ Minho and Thomas hold hands, locked in rigor mortis, and ignore the chattering of their teeth. Minho and Thomas hold hands, locked in rigor mortis, and keep seeing Newt in their shadows. 

But they aren’t myths. Thomas isn’t Scheherazade. He certainly isn’t a messiah. Myths can’t bleed. 

In the story Thomas wanted, they all watched the dawn together, and there was no blood on the floor. 

*

Under Roman rule, one man would step up to defend the city in a state of emergency. Under Roman rule, _panem et circuses_ , one man, picked at random, took control of organising the defence, the offense, took the lives of the city and cradled them in his hands. _You were always their favourite, Thomas. You always were._ It wasn’t a privilege to be chosen. It wasn’t an honour. It was duty, to dip your hands in blood like that. One morning After, Thomas tells Minho this and Minho snorts and Thomas feels abruptly annoyed; Minho never had time for stories the way Newt did. No, that’s wrong: none of them had time. They made it. And Minho made time for his whittling and his sleeping in the sun and his watching Newt with a shy, subtle delight. It wasn’t about time, because Minho never had the inclination towards anything but the intensely pragmatic.  

And him, Thomas thought, almost grudgingly. Minho made time for him, too. 

“Sounds like garbage,” Minho says shortly, buckling his belt, head bowed. The curve of his shoulder is cut so clean Thomas could cry with it. They talk about him as WICKED’s darling, but when Thomas hears  _ golden boy _ he always thinks of Minho, the glimmer of his skin in the dawn and body like a furnace. He thinks of Minho’s smile, harder won than Newt’s, and the way laughter racks through his body like torture only good, the same way he shivers when Thomas touches him. 

He thinks about how both of them always close their eyes, afraid of showing too much, how Newt kept his open. 

“Why’s it garbage when you don’t like it, again?” Thomas says, and Minho’s eyes flash. “You could hit me, you know. Not a Glader anymore. Not a Keeper anymore. You could hit me.”

They’ve been like this, on and off, for weeks, no Newt as a barrier to them: headstrong Thomas a battering ram against the solid wall that is Minho, and no one wins when they fight, and now there’s no one to make them stop.  

“No, because you’re a dumb fucking shank,” Minho says, “and all you want is hurt to match your insides, and I’m not giving it to you.” 

It’s hard, picking a fight with Minho. You have to chip away at his plaster heart, get in through the slight faltering between words. Today, he’s giving no ground. Today, this is not a game Thomas can win. Minho heads for the door and Thomas watches from the makeshift bed on the floor. 

“If I’m a dumb fucking shank, what does that make you?” Thomas calls, pulse wild, because if between the two of them they hadn’t kept him alive, how were they going to manage with just one on one? 

Minho turns and looks at him, slower and wearily. 

“It makes me even dumber,” he says, and goes out into the sun. 

*****

"He said please," Thomas says into the mirror-still of the night, and Minho closes his eyes against the weight of it. Minho, of all people, knows how rough it was to say no to Newt, how it tasted sour in your mouth.

"Don't you dare carry this, Thomas," Minho says. "Don't you dare."

Guilt yokes like iron. Thomas' eyes glint and catch at the hole in Minho's chest. Minho reaches out and curls his hand around the back of Thomas' neck, thumbs over the raised skin. _To be killed by Group B._ They can say everything out of the reach of morning.  When Minho tugs, Thomas goes: not during the day, not ever, but in the night Thomas goes. Minho brings their foreheads together.

"You helped him," Minho says, low and firm, his Keeper's voice, his caretaker's voice, and Thomas breathes out a shudder of relief. The noise he makes is like the snap of rusted machinery finally halting.

"He was ours, and I killed him," Thomas says, and Minho looks at their golden boy, at the black holes of his eyes and the scorch of his hope and says "He was ours, and he'd already been taken."

Minho didn't used to waste energy on being angry; rage wouldn't get him through the Maze, rage wouldn't get him through the days. He wonders what it says, that the anger he kept at bay has started catching up the second he stood still. Alby always used to say anger is a secondary emotion. _Gally, anger is a secondary emotion._ What a smug bastard, dead in the Glade and still fucking right. 

It's easier to be angry with the boy with the gun than notice you're bleeding out yourself. It's easier to be angry with him than notice his hands shaking. It's easier to close your eyes and call it an eclipse. It's easier -

*

_You're fucked, Minho_ , Newt had said back in the Glade before his fall. _Liking someone like me, you're fucked._

_I thought that was the point_ , Minho had replied, downing Gally's shit moonshine. Newt had laughed and then dropped the laugh dead.

_I'm gonna get inside your shell_ , Newt had said, tracing nonsense patterns along the line of Minho's collarbone, _and once I do that, that's when it'll happen._

_What will?_ Minho had looked at Newt then, sixteen going on something and high on the way Newt saw him less as Keeper and more as something to be kept.

Newt had shrugged, almond-bitter suddenly. _You'll forget how to run._

It's easier to be angry with the boy with the gun, the boy with the shaking hands. It's easier to bolt. It's harder to say _give me the gun, Thomas._ It's harder to say _give me the night, Thomas._ It's harder to say _give me your grief, Thomas. I was a Runner. I have carried dead men before._

It's easier to be angry with the boy with the gun. It's harder to love him. It's harder to stand still.

_ You'll forget how to run. _

(Minho had always hated it when Newt was right.)

*

The thing Thomas forgets is he is not the only one who killed his friends to get ahead or get even or get redemption. Ben's hair had been matted with sweat and fear and still it had been soft, so Minho had grabbed the roughness of his collar instead. 

There were others, of course. Minho carries their names like stones in his pockets. Give me your grief, Thomas. What's one more dead man? Newt was slight, even if he had always weighed more than you'd think.

(Give me your grief, Thomas, and I'll give you mine. I'm so tired of running.)

*

"Do you remember how he used to - "

Thomas could be asking anything. He could be asking about Newt's laugh, his eyes, the birthmark on his hip, his limp, his fucking eyelashes - 

"Sure do," Minho says, and it comes out sounding rusty. Maybe they're both machines. Maybe they're both running out. Maybe they've stopped running already. Minho doesn't know. He blinks, and the tears come easy, come like breathing or the roll of his shoulders. He doesn't look at Thomas. 

"Don't you start carrying it if I can't," Thomas says, sounding harsh. He leans over and kisses the side of Minho's face, at his hairline, the feel of his mouth smudged and real. "Don't you start carrying anything." 

"I can't forget," Minho replies, each word slow and dragged out of his chest. "I can't forget. He should be here. What if I forget?" 

"You dumb fucking shank," Thomas says. "That's what I'm gonna be here for."

Glader always sounded a little halting in his voice. Minho doesn't say anything, keeps his spine locked and his eyes forward.

"Why didn't you run?" he asks again. "That time. Why didn't you run?"

"You still haven't -" Thomas begins again, and Minho shoves him without looking. 

"That's a fucking lie. You saw stars. Newt kept saying I'd killed you." 

Thomas' face is rising red. Minho snorts and looks back out at this last pocket of safety. 

"I guess." Thomas licks his lips, nervous, when Minho glances his way. "I guess you're not the dumbest one, after all." 

Minho reaches out and blindly takes Thomas' hand. Thomas curls his fingers in a death grip.  

"I didn't run because you didn't," Thomas finally admits, all in a rush. "I didn't run because you didn't." 

Minho just lifts their joined hands, kisses his knuckles, and takes another breath. 


End file.
